[mythtv-users] It's not the TiVo that she loved...

Brian Wood beww at beww.org
Wed Apr 5 20:50:43 UTC 2006


On Apr 5, 2006, at 2:27 PM, Steven Adeff wrote:

> On 4/5/06, Schlaegel <vthtym0505 at schlaegel.com> wrote:
>> On 4/5/06, Jesse Guardiani <jesse at wingnet.net> wrote:
>>> Steven Adeff wrote:
>>>> On 4/5/06, Brian Wood <beww at beww.org> wrote:
>>>> not as much as the $2000 spent on Myth... (well, whatever amount...
>>>> lump some payments always seem like more than monthly ones).
>>> hear hear. MythTV only makes sense as a hobby or if you need the  
>>> added
>>> functionality/disk space.
>>> Tivo is cheaper (and probably easier to use and possibly more  
>>> reliable)
>>> by far. I suspect that might
>>> change as time marches on though.
>>
>> It all depends on how you choose to go about MythTV. I spent about
>> $130 for my setup.
>> MythTV is just a process/daemon that runs independently in the
>> background on my primary PC. I bought a PVR350, which does hardware
>> encode/decode and I can do everything I want with no impact on
>> processor usage. I kept the computer where it was in a different  
>> room,
>> and just routed some cable between the computer and TV.
>>
>> Now if I can only convince the MythTV developers to keep  
>> supporting us
>> PVR350 folk.
>
> Isaac is in the pocket of NVidia and AMD, he's gunna force you to get
> a GeForce and Athlon with his software upgrades ;-)
>
> but seriously, I just think that none of the current devs are
> using/reliant on the PVR350, thus no support.
>

I think several factors work against the 350, or at least the mpeg-2  
decoder in it.

I think it is agreed that except for that mpeg decoder the350s output  
is in every way inferior to a $40 5200 card, so I am referring to its  
decoder use and not its use as a standard framebuffer.

HD will be a bigger and bigger factor as time goes on, and the 350  
can't handle that.

More and more people will go mpeg-4, as CPUs get faster and storage  
requirements for HD get bigger, and as direct to mpeg4 capture  
devices become more common.

I hear that Myth will be going to an Open-GL based UI, which would be  
a problem for the 350.

5200s will get cheaper as time goes on.

All of these things would argue against buying a 350 today, and the  
limited number of systems using them will decline as more people go  
to HD.

Would you be an avid developer of support for this card under these  
circumstances ??


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